Free fun day

 There have been lots of events in town this year as it is 75 years since the new town started. It has changed a lot even since we moved here 34 years ago. We have some beautiful places here though. The museum is one and has beautiful walled gardens. Originally there was a big house which was demolished in 1950 but the stables still stand and house the museum. It used to be a cycle museum started by John Collins who had a huge collection and used to ride his penny farthing sometimes.

The general museum was in another big house across town but was a bit run down so it was decided to move the exhibits to the cycle museum and have that as the town museum. DS worked there doing archiving in the transition.  Some of the cycles are still there. Also in the grounds is the copper still from Gilbey's Gin distillery which was near our house but the site is now Sainsbury's. 

So today there was a free event as part of the town celebrations. DS, DDIL, GD, DB and I all went and had a great time especially little granddaughter. Music was provided by the steel band and later the ukelele group. The Brass band was later but we had gone by then. A man always brings some interesting games to these events and GD loves them. Her favourites were the rocket launcher with DS leaping about to catch it and another game which involved pulling two strings to guide a large marble to the top of the board without it going into a hole. She was very determined to do this and kept trying until she could and then had to keep repeating the feat. 

We collected several leaflets of more free events over the next month so lots more to look forward to. 

The last picture is the medlar tree in the orchard where we took shelter from the sun. It is lovely to have these events open again after the last two years.

Missing again

After a long abscence I was going to try to post every week but its been months. I haven't really got an excuse. I just didn't feel like it. I have joined several facebook groups about frugal living and have put posts on those. Also I have started following some youtube channels. 

I had shingles earlier on in the year in spite of being vaccinated. This month I finally caught covid and had a couple of quite bad days. I seem to be ok now two and a half weeks after succumbing. 

DD came for a week when it was very hot and as she has ME and suffers in the heat we couldn't do much especially as it was too hot for the dog. We did have a group greyhound walk when it was cooler the day before I took her home. 

I stayed for five days and we did have a nice time although she is limited. The day after we got back to hers she had to rest so I drove to Brightlingsea and had a walk along the estuary and looked around the village including buying some shorts in the charity shop. 

 We also went to the Beth Chatto gardens where I have intended to go for ages. 

I didn't manage a swim in the sea as we had to go in the morning when DD is up to it but we did have a paddle. In my case up to my chest. The tide was going out and it was rougher than I like. We still enjoyed it and managed to go for a carvery later. 

Everything came to a standstill the next week when I was home due to covid. Thankfully DD didn't get it. This week I took little GD for her first train journey. 5 stops and 20 minutes to a village to visit a farm which she loved and ran around with the baby goats. It was so peaceful. 

Today I had lots of frugal wins. Found a beautiful Monsoon top in the charity shop for £5 and a hand puppet craft kit for GD for 99p. Tesco had lots of yellow sticker meat at half price so I bought beef for family dinner tomorrow, sausages and pork steak. On the walk back I saw somebody having a declutter putting things by the bins in a carpark so I took two scooters for GD as she's outgrown her first one. She can keep one here and take one home. Then I went back in the car and collected a kids kitchen for GD to play with in the garden during the summer. The man throwing them out even helped me put it into the car. I really feel pleased when I save things from landfill and get something for nothing.